1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to browse of articles via a communication network.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, not only users read articles such as news on the Internet, but users also actively perform activities to transmit information by themselves or exchange information with other users. For example, a comment function on news articles according to one conventional technology allows users to post and browse comments on specific individual news articles.
Further, machine retrieval has been suggested to retrieve specific individual articles and remarks regarding the articles on blogs or the like based on keywords designated by users, and displays the retrieved articles together with the retrieved remarks in an associated manner (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-309515).
Furthermore, in a social networking service (SNS) (for example, see Japanese National Publication of International Patent Application No. 2011-507079), users can exchange information on a topic of their mutual interests with someone they know in the real world by registering them as friends on the SNS. User of a mini-blog can appropriately choose persons to follow so that comments to be displayed in a timeline are those match with his/her own interests.
However, the news comment function is used separately for each article. When different articles exist on the same topic, users have to write comment for each article and read comments of each article separately. Further, when the machine retrieval is employed, it is usually difficult to obtain an intended result only by word search, irrespective of target fields. Thus, the articles obtained by machine retrieval seldom match with the interest of users.
In a case of the SNS, users communicate with a very limited number of people, i.e., people whom they know in the real world. Thus, there is only a limited possibility that they share same interest and concern among various themes in the world.